


Whatever Happened to the Ieta?

by TheAlemBooks



Category: Rise of the Ieta, The Alem Books
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Love Confessions, Post-War, Stolen Moments, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, friends to strangers, magical recovery, mental health, other gods are mentioned - Freeform, therapy (briefly)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23805322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAlemBooks/pseuds/TheAlemBooks
Summary: After the war and the death and the everything, they wonder where the Ieta is. Aaron lives on his private island and Colin was never of any interest to reporters, so no one knows how to find out what happened to Anne. They try to stalk her New York apartment, but it’s been empty for months. They ask the Ohniri, who should know where she is, but the Alem government scratches its head and shrugs. They haven’t seen her. The Cturis Tribune contacts every Orace on payroll, but none can find her. They even try asking the gods, but for once they keep their lips shut and tell the Alem: she will return when she wants.They take that to mean she’s dead.
Relationships: Anne Robertson/Colin Smith
Kudos: 2





	Whatever Happened to the Ieta?

After the war and the death and the  _ everything _ , they wonder where the Ieta is. Aaron lives on his private island and Colin was never of any interest to reporters, so no one knows how to find out what happened to Anne. They try to stalk her New York apartment, but it’s been empty for months. They ask the Ohniri, who should know where she is, but the Alem government scratches its head and shrugs. They haven’t seen her. The  _ Cturis Tribune _ contacts every Orace on payroll, but none can find her. They even try asking the gods, but for once they keep their lips shut and tell the Alem:  _ she will return when she wants _ . 

They take that to mean she’s dead.

* * *

Anne is not dead. 

She’s twenty years old and is  _ tired _ . The first month after the war is a flurry of treaties and sorting out the last minute details and making sure everyone is alive. Then, when the coast clears, Anne gets a new phone. She gives her number to four people: Aaron, Colin, Viseal, and her dad. The rest can go to Rahdi. Then she packs her bags and leaves.

At first she goes cross country human-style, taking trains and planes to where she needs to go. She visits some National Parks and her other dad and a couple of gods she likes along the way. She stops by Sally’s, but not for long. She gets all the way from New York to Seattle before she gets bored of travelling and decides to settle. 

She has money, because Viseal gave her a credit card without any limits--besides human currency is meaningless--so she buys a broken house in the woods and decides to stay there. The next couple of months, she fixes the house, paints it once in blue then does it again as a mural, and redoes the kitchen. The walls are now yellow instead of mottled brown. She buys furniture and decorations from goodwill and spends her afternoons fixing clocks and tightening the screws to stools.

Her magic settles inside of her after the war. It’s not much magic anymore, most of it had splintered in those final blows with Trusde, but it’s still there, inside of her. It has become a presence, but not a nuisance. She thinks her own magic didn’t expect to live past nineteen, but here she was. Most Ietas died young, all the history books and internet say so. But she hadn’t. 

Anne watches human TV because she never could watch the Alem stuff. Her computer out here doesn’t have KVT anyway, so Anne’s pretty out of the loop when it comes to the magical affairs of her fellow Alem. Once a month, Anne gets a letter from Viseal and every week, Anne calls her dad. He’s shacked up with Ms. Xie, which Anne is happy about, but Anne doesn’t plan to leave her home unless there’s a wedding. (There’ll be one next year.) Her dad sounds content over the phone, something he hasn’t been in years. He misses her though, she can tell, but it’s okay; he’s coming up at the end of summer and for all the major holidays. 

Aaron sends her a million texts a day. He’s bored out of his mind. Aaron was never really good at sitting still. Anne used to be like that, but now she loves doing nothing. He’s still in rehab for his magic, so he bothers Anne with memes and little silly bits from the  _ Tribune _ . Aaron doesn’t talk about the future with her because he’s rich and he can restart his life whenever. Anne isn’t necessarily rich, she’s just tired. 

She can feel her life’s been paused. Aaron has something to look forward to. Art school or apprenticeships or tabloids, whatever he wants he can have. Anne doesn’t have anything like that. No one expected her to stop Trusde and live to tell about it. She’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop or some kind of revelation to hit her about what she’s supposed to do with her life. Maybe she doesn’t have anything else to do. Maybe all she has left is to die, whether it be this year or twenty from now. She doesn’t need to do anything else with her life. 

* * *

It’s been months. The summer has long passed. Her dad left her with kisses and an invitation to an engagement party in December. She spends her time reading books and watching cop shows on TV. She doesn’t use her powers much these days. She has no need for it. Sometimes she creates flames with the twist of her fingers. She picks up a couple of phrases in ASL to see what that does to her magic with mixed results.  _ Thanks _ creates a warm bust of fire from her lips much to her surprise. Most of her magic is quiet, depleted. She can’t feel her Yadalm powers nor her Orace and Anche abilities. Her Vibrem senses are dulled, not gone. Only her sense of touch is sensitive these days. She can still teleport, but every time she does, the muscles in her back bunch up and she’s left achy for the rest of the day.

Anne learns how to be human again because being Alem is too difficult sometimes. Sometimes she misses it, other times she feels the emptiness gnawing at her and knows she’s alive for once. Before she’d ridden a comet of power and magic and split apart at every moment. Now she’s dulled. Now she can breathe easily. 

She starts cooking again because it reminds her how good the world can be. She thinks of Viseal sometimes when she makes a meal. Viseal stopped by once after Anne first settled in, but hasn’t returned since. Usually, Anne would find that strange, but it feels right. 

There’s a grove of berry bushes near where she lives. Anne did some checking; they aren’t poisonous. One fall day, she goes out and plucks as many berries as she can before the sun is too sticky. It might be September, but Tyf refuses to stop shining brightly on her. She thinks all the gods are trying to be gentle to her. To make up for all the time they were assholes. She washes the blueberries and the jars. She spends the rest of the afternoon learning to make jam. Her first batch is a little tart, her next one too sweet, but her third one tastes alright. She packs the different jars away. Her dad will like the tart kind. Viseal will like the sweetness. Aaron too. Anne pulls out a sheet of paper and makes a small list of who would like what. By the time she’s done, she only has three jars to herself. That’s alright. Anne doesn’t use a lot of jam anyway. In the morning, she goes into town and mails them.

Anne wanders around town for a bit. She spots the goodwill and heads inside. There are beaten chairs, rusty tools, old toys, and plenty of flannel. Anne buys herself a couple of new shirts, a cotton dress, two puzzle sets, and some beaten down pieces of furniture. Anne decides she wants to learn how to fix furniture, polish it good and new. She has a lot of time on her hand and money isn’t an issue. This is what it must be like for retired white people. Anne thinks everyone should be given the time to be crafty. She’s excited to be alone with her broken toys. They’ll keep her busy.

She gets home easily enough and lays down a tarp in her mostly empty living room. She might not be much of a Yadalm anymore, but she still has the artistic touch. She knows exactly what she wants to do with the wood, how to use the varnish, and what music to play while she does it. Aaron’s uncle liked to work with wood. One summer afternoon at his place, the three of them--Anne, Aaron, and Colin--watched his uncle fix an antique desk then work a canoe. Aaron and Colin mostly bickered about Alem history, but Anne liked the way Aaron’s uncle brought life back into the furniture. Anne had never seen that happen before. That’s what she does that afternoon: brings life to goodwill pieces. She mends one of the shirts too, late that night when she couldn’t fall asleep.

When she did manage to sleep, Ciclou blessed her with the happy childhood memories one tended to forget. He always did give her the best dreams.

* * *

When it rains, Anne pulls out the box of puzzles and drinks three-teapot’s worth of tea. Her eyes droop under the duvet she’s dragged out into the living room, but she feels content. Sometimes, when it rains out, Anne can feel the heaviness in the corners of her eyes and her elbow itches just before the crack of lightning. Anne doesn’t think she’s an Orace anymore, but maybe there’s a little juice left in her. Anne doesn’t give it much thought.

Her study is stuffed with bits of furniture. Once she started to repair stuff, she found she couldn’t stop. Anne’s thinking of opening one of those Etsy shops, sell the stuff for cheap. Maybe use the money to donate to some cause or another. Anne hasn’t decided yet. She likes everything she’s fixed. Some of it is hers now. She de-dented a toaster and unearthed a beautiful desk that she leaves her father’s letters on. There’s a chandelier she fixed. Part of her wants to hang it up in the bathroom just for the laughs. She hasn’t decided yet on that one.

* * *

It’s the middle of the night in October. Anne has just turned the lights off and gotten under the covers her bed, ready for an early night after spending all day watching Netflix. Instead, she’s throwing on a big sweater and walking down the hallway because someone has knocked at her door. Her dads know to call ahead, so does Viseal. Maybe it’s Aaron, Anne thinks. But Aaron’s still under house arrest for stealing that sword. He also knows better than to show up announced. It could be her neighbors, but that seems unlikely. It’s the middle of the night and they live twenty minutes away. Anne’s first thought is actually that it’s one of Trusde’s maniac followers, but her instincts aren’t itching from terror. So Anne creeps down the hallway and towards the door, a flicker of flame at her fingertips. She unlocks the deadbolt and pulls the handle.

Colin.

She hasn’t seen him since long before she left. He looks different. Healthy. The bulk he built up for the war has slimmed, but he’s clearly healed from their mess. Anne doesn’t know why she’s so surprised. Maybe because he never tried to talk to her after the war despite their shared history. Maybe because his hair is different and he seems taller and he’s here. He’s standing in front of her. And he’s looking at her the same way she’s looking at him, like they’re strangers when they really aren’t. 

“Colin, what are you doing here?”

“I got your jam,” he says. He pulls something out of his duffle. That’s when Anne notices he brought luggage.

“Okay?”

“It’s sweet,” he says. 

Anne knows that tone of voice. “You came all the way here to tell me I made your jam too sweet?”

“Uh, no.” He shifts on his feet. “I came because you sent me jam.”

“Yeah, and?”

“I didn’t think you would.”

Her brows furrow. “What do you mean?”

“I thought…well, I didn’t think you wanted anything to do with me.”

Anne blinks. “What? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Can I come in?” 

Anne remembers it’s the middle of the night in October and Colin’s a Vibrem. He’s wearing a thick coat, but he has always been sensitive to the cold. Anne thinks about it for a moment. She thought she was going to have a nice evening in bed. Now Colin’s shown up on her doorstep and wants to talk. Anne steps aside and lets him in.

They go to her living room. Anne curls up against an armchair. Colin sets his duffle on the floor. He sits, back straight, on the other chair. Anne watches him while he stares at his knees. She thinks about letting him guide the conversation. Because he came here to talk to her and because Anne is too tired to instigate anything.

“You left without saying goodbye.”

“I said goodbye,” Anne says.

Colin’s eyes narrow. “The last thing you said to me was that I should get a haircut.”

Anne thinks about it. She does remember telling him that because Colin had shown up to the final battle with a mullet. “I’m almost positive I said goodbye to you.” At least, she thinks she did. “We were at that party and I said goodbye to everyone.”

“But you didn’t say goodbye to  _ me _ ,” Colin says like Anne should’ve known better. Maybe he’s right. She should’ve. She and Aaron shared brunch before Anne announced she was leaving. Colin had been packing up for college.

“I’m sorry,” because that’s all she can say. And because she’s stupid, “You never called or texted.”

“Because  _ you _ left.”

“I sent you my number.”

“You sent my mom your number--”

“--because you were busy at college--”

“--and you never bothered to write!” Colin’s voice strikes sharp. Anne knows Colin isn’t one to shout. Colin, ashamed of himself, looks down at his knees. “I had to find out where you were from Aaron because I didn’t know if you ever wanted to speak to me again.”

“Why would I never want to speak to you again?” Anne asks, confused. “You’ve never wronged me, Colin.”

She watches him as he rubs at his cheeks. To hot, she realizes. He’s blushing. “I mean…there was that thing.”

“Thing?” Anne’s brow furrows.

“You know, from the war.”

“Colin, the war lasted seven years, I think you’re going to have to be more specific.” 

“The thing with you and I,” he says. He stares at her. Meaningfully.

Anne tries to think about it. She’s not sure what he’s talking about. What thing between--oh. Anne blushes.

“That thing,” he confirms.

The thing, he’s talking about, is when he hugged her right before the battle and told her he loved her. Anne had said it back.

“I thought you meant like ‘I love you bro, please don’t die’ kind of ‘I love you,’” Anne admits.

“That’s not what it was,” he tells her. He’s looking at his knees again. “At least, for me.”

“I--” When she said ‘I love you’ to him, back then, she’d meant it as  _ I love you _ too. Because of course she loves Colin. It’s Colin. And she wants to tell him because that would be the easy thing and the nice thing and the hopeful thing. But Anne’s not…the aftermath of wars and powers and death, it’s different than being in it. She loves him, still does. But she’s not ready to feel those things yet. She needs time to herself, to heal. “Okay.”

“Okay?” he says.

“Colin.” She wishes she was sitting next to him so she could hold his hand. “I’m--we’re--”

“I’ve messed it all up,” Colin realizes.

“No,” Anne’s voice is firm, commanding. They both shiver because she doesn’t use that voice often. “I’m trying to tell you I feel the same,” she hates the hope on his face, “but I’m not--we’re not--it’s not the right time.”

“Oh.”

She gets up and sits next to him. He doesn’t react. Anne lets herself be vulnerable to him and everything in the world. “We’re a part of the same story. You’re just a couple chapters ahead.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t expect you to wait for me,” Anne says, because it’s the right thing to say even if she’s lying, “you deserve love and to be loved. But I just need some time.”

“Have you seen a therapist?” Colin asks because he understands her better than anyone else. Maybe he’s a little broken too, but Colin’s better at asking for help than Anne.

“I have Viseal.”

“But are you asking for help?”

She rests her forehead on his shoulder. Like they used to when they were on the run. She kisses the sleeve of his shirt briefly. “I will, when I’m ready.”

“Okay.” He’s fingers graze across her knee briefly. “I’ll wait for you.”

“You shouldn’t,” Anne says. “I want you to, but you shouldn’t.” He deserves better.

“There’s no one else,” he tells her. Anne might not be the greatest Vibrem, but she knows he’s a liar. Girls and boys will always want Colin. He’s sweet, unassuming, and the bestest man Anne’s ever met.

“Do you want to stay for a few days?” she asks.

“Yes.”

* * *

They spend most of those days talking, but not about the hurt or the love. They talk about Aaron and the funny bits of their quest. They talk politics, but it’s mostly Colin. They play board games. Anne wears her white cotton dress and pretends it’s not so Colin will look at her (although he does and he tries not to and Anne wonder’s what she’d have to wear so that he would never stop looking at her.) Anne bakes them a peach pie. Colin cooks them dinner because she’s always loved his carbonara. They debate whether or not to invite Aaron, but they both silently agree that this meet-up is for the two of them and not the three. Aaron’s great, the best even, but Anne wants to be alone with Colin. They drink wine because Bhallet sends her a bottle every couple months or so. Anne doesn’t know why, but it’s good wine. 

They watch human children’s movies because Colin’s seen a couple over the years. Colin’s studying seismology currently, but they both know he’ll switch to something creative soon enough. Anne thinks he’d make a wonderful actor, not because he’s a good lair, but because he’s always been empathetic and earnest. He understands people. Anne’s stopped trying. She shows him all the stuff she’s rebuilt and they take a walk in the woods one morning. It’s crisp out and Anne loves it. Colin looks like he’s about to freeze. She wants to tuck his face into the crook of her neck and keep him warm, but that seems to forward. He smiles at her like he already knows.

On Tuesday, he has to go back to school. Anne understands and teleports him to the closest Toim-checkpoint. They hug goodbye, maybe for too long, maybe a bit desperately, maybe perfectly, but all they do is hug. Then Colin has to leave. She doesn’t cry, but if she was young, she might’ve. Anne teleports home and is about to get some ice for her bunched up shoulders when she realizes nothing hurts.

* * *

Over the next few months she’s better. They text every couple of days and Anne tries not to miss him. She didn’t think she’d miss him so much, but she should’ve known all along. Colin is Colin. Anne is Anne. Some things are going to be the same. Love is one of them. For Colin’s birthday, Anne and Aaron show up to take him bar-hopping. No one seems to recognize them because they’ve all been out of the media coverage for a couple of months, plus all their hair is different. Colin’s shorter, Aaron’s half shaved, Anne’s longer. Aaron even has the beginning of a bear. They’re older and better. Anne’s never been happier.

* * *

She starts calling up Viseal more frequently. She pretends it's not therapy until Viseal has her come to her office one day and she can’t pretend any longer. They have a couple of breakthroughs. Anne was in therapy as a kid, right after her mom died. She knows that breakthroughs are only when you’re willing to open up. Anne’s willing to open up. Mostly it’s Viseal. If you can’t be honest with the goddess of advice, who can you be open to? Still, Anne knows it’ll take her years to be “better.”

“The goal isn’t to be better, Anne,” Viseal tells her. “Better can be too unattainable.”

That’s true. Anne’s better is her without the trauma. That’ll never happen. “Then what should I do?”

“Accept it, adapt to it. I gave you a year to live in that cabin alone. Staying away until you’re better will just leave you paused. You won’t have a life to lead.”

“Well…I don’t know what I want to do, in life, it all seems kind of pointless.”

That opens a whole new topic of conversation. 

* * *

December comes and Anne puts on her orange sash and heads to her dad’s engagement party. This will be the first time she’s been in a crowded room since the war. She knows all of the veterans will be there, because it’s the polite thing to do and because Ms. Xie had become more threatening since the war. No one wanted to disappoint her. Anne came with a speech and she’s already nervous enough. Colin will be here. So will Aaron and her other friends, but that’s not who she’s nervous about. 

The party’s being held in the Xie ancestral home, which is a mile away from the school. Her dad moved in about a year ago. They still have their apartment, but it’s mostly for Anne. Money doesn’t matter anymore when you’re the Ieta. 

Anne’s walking up the driveway to the house when she spots him sitting outside on a rock. He’s wearing something nice and formal, a sash just like hers. They have badges too, but Anne doesn’t like to wear them. There are a few stragglers outside, but they’re closer to the back than the front. Colin gets up from the boulder.

“Did you wait here for me?” she asks. “I didn’t ask you to.”

“Of course I waited for you.” It’s Colin afterall. 

They’re standing in front of each other now. Anne’s nervous and a little wobbly in the heels. They hug briefly, but he’s still got one hand on her. He’s pulling her, just slightly, by the elbow. If it was anyone else, Anne would be threatened. But it’s Colin and Colin would never do this to anyone else. 

“I’m going to kiss you now,” she says. It feels like the world is on fire, in the moment between her words and him hearing it. He smiles and the hard part is over.

“Really?” he asks.

“Yes.” But she doesn’t move any closer. This is frightening afterall. There’s a long moment.

His face is soft. Open. “Do you need some help?” Beautiful.

“Maybe just a little,” she admits.

And he laughs and then she laughs and then he pulls her closer. And they kiss, because that’s all she needs at this moment.


End file.
